


I've Been Closing My Eyes

by perfectpro



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 34 Days Challenge, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7047607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jack Zimmermann? You worked with him and Kent Parson together? What happened?” Bitty asks before he can help himself.</p><p>Everyone’s heard the stories. Parse and Zimms, taking the world of dream share by storm, trained by Dominic Cobb himself. Ten years later, no one’s heard from either in two years.</p><p>Shrugging his shoulders, Shitty tries to think of how to phrase it. “No one comes out of Limbo the same.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Been Closing My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Oh Wonder's "Without You", which perfectly describes the kind of feelings that I was going for this.  
>  _Do you know that I've been closing my eyes?_  
>  _Love me slow, hallucinating_  
>  _Swinging me all of your light_  
>   
>  This was written for Week Two of The 34 Days Challenge, for the Alternate Universe portion of Alternate Universe/Canon Divergence.

To make a long story short, Jack dies and Kent drops off the face of the earth.

More or less. No activity from any of his aliases or identities, Kent Parson drops off the grid and goes under the radar. The people who go looking for him come up empty handed, because he doesn’t want to be found. If he did, he wouldn’t have left.

When Kent left Montreal, he had backpack, a PASIV, and a passport and was across the border before the sun rose. He’d seen the monitor flatline, and he wasn’t going to stick around to have someone tell him what he already knew. Jack was dead, and he really didn’t have a need to be there anymore. He really didn’t have a need to be anywhere anymore.

-x-

Tracing a lace pattern for a pie crust, Bitty ignores the phone that’s ringing next to him. It’s his work phone, so it’s probably not that important, and it’s a good number to give to people that he might not want to talk to. And he can already tell that he doesn’t want to talk to whoever this is, even without checking the caller ID. It’s Sunday, he just finished up a job that went two weeks longer than expected, and he’s taking a break from all things work related until Thursday. And his mama knows to call his real phone if she needs him.

Done with the pattern, he lowers it onto the apple pie as the ringing dies down. He’s checking the oven when it starts up again, and he’s about to answer and give whoever it is a piece of his mind, but then he notices that it’s not coming from his work phone anymore.

Bitty scrambles to the edge of the counter and grabs his phone, not checking to see who’s calling before answering and announcing, “Eric Bittle.”

“Bitty, you’ve got to stop doing that, it cracks me up,” a familiar voice says across the line, and Bitty can’t help but laugh.

“Just because you go by Shitty doesn’t mean the rest of us are so blasé when it comes to our professional lives.” Getting the pie in the oven, Bitty checks the timer before he shuts the oven door and starts moving the kitchen supplies to the sink.

There’s a huff on the other end, and then Shitty starts out slowly, almost guiltily, “I know you’re taking a break…”

“I’m not touching anything to do with dream sharing until Thursday. The job took an additional two weeks, because apparently the point man didn’t know that he’d been militarized. Remind me to never take a job just for the money,” Bitty huffs.

Shitty gives a low whistle. “He missed that the guy was militarized? That’s the first thing you look for. Look, I’m sorry about that, I really am, but I’ve got a job for you.”

With a roll of his eyes, Bitty doesn’t even stop to think about it before rejecting it. “Shitty, I just said that I’m not going near anything even related to dream sharing until Thursday. Maybe Friday, maybe I’ll take the weekend. I don’t know, but I’m not taking a job right now. The only person I would take a job from right now would be–”

“Kent Parson,” Shitty interjects.

Bitty laughs. “I was going to say Beyoncé, but I’d be interested in that one, too.”

There’s a pause, and Bitty is almost curious enough to ask about what the job actually is when Shitty asks, “So you’re interested?”

“You didn’t even tell me who the job’s from, Shitty, I don’t know if I’m interested or not.” Noticing some flour on the counter, Bitty grabs a sponge and runs it under some water before turning to wipe the excess flour away.

“I just told you. Kent Parson.”

Bitty drops the sponge.

“Shitty, I hate to say this, but you’ve got to be shitting me,” Bitty says, because no one’s heard from Kent Parson in a year. Over a year, he thinks, doing the mental math. June is in… It’s mid-April, June is a month and a half away, really two and a half months considering that it was late June. Almost two years since Kent Parson left the dreamsharing game. No one actually thought he’d come back.

There’s a giggle, and then, “See, Bitty, this is why I love you. You know I love to hear it and you say it anyway. And I shit you nots, Bits, it’s Kent Parson. He needs a full team and wanted me to get the best. You want in or not?”

Of course Bitty wants in. There’s just one problem. “I thought Parson did all the architecture for his jobs.”

It goes quiet for a moment, and then Shitty says carefully, “That’s kind of the problem. I can explain it all once you’re here, but I don’t know how well I’m going to be able to explain it. No one’s ever done something like this, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I know that it won’t be easy. That’s why I need you.”

It’s a lot to take in. “Shitty, I’ve never even met the guy. He doesn’t know me.”

“He needs the best, and that’s you,” Shitty answers, even and ready.

Bitty looks around his kitchen and sighs, finally reaching for his work phone and flipping through contacts. “I can’t start working until I know what he needs. When do we fly out?” he asks. If anything is worth giving up a break for, it’s a job from Kent Parson.

“Knew you’d be there for me. We leave from Boston at the end of the month. I have to call Holster and Ransom. We’re getting the band back together!” Shitty crows, laughing just before the line goes dead.

-x-

Bitty doesn’t know how long the flight will be, because he doesn’t know where they’re flying to. Shitty doesn’t either, because Kent Parson is a secretive person. To be fair, he should have known that already, considering that the guy basically disappeared two years ago. He packs three bags, one with winter gear, one for warm weather, and one filled with baking supplies. There’s nothing shameful about packing a few familiar pie pans to have with him.

In Boston, when they sit down, he asks Shitty what he should have asked him while they were on the phone. “How do you know Kent Parson anyway?” he inquires, narrowing his eyes.

Shitty shrugs and looks out the window onto the tarmac. It’s thirty minutes to takeoff and they’re the first ones on board. “I did a job with him a few years back. It was the big banking firm I told you about, early 2009. They needed two point men because there was so much going on with it, and Jack had heard of me through the Shell Oil job I’d done the year before, so he asked me. Kent was the architect,” Shitty says, giving a kind of shrug.

“Jack Zimmermann? You worked with him and Kent Parson together? What happened?” Bitty asks before he can help himself. 

Everyone’s heard the stories. Parse and Zimms, taking the world of dream share by storm, trained by Dominic Cobb himself. Ten years later, no one’s heard from them in two years.

Shrugging his shoulders, Shitty tries to think of how to phrase it. “No one comes out of Limbo the same.”

Bitty presses a little further. “What were they like? When you knew them, I mean.”

Shitty blinks, considers the question and its weight. “They were happy,” he says at last, looking up at the front of them plane, where Ransom and Holster have finally come on board, dragging Lardo in behind them. Bitty is so excited to see them that he doesn’t notice Shitty exhaling in relief before standing up and going to greet them.

“Oh, goodness, you really did get everyone!” Bitty exclaims, being pulled in by Holster to what’s quickly become a group hug.

“Well, I did say I was getting the band back together,” Shitty reminds him, nuzzling Lardo affectionately even as she tries to push him away.

-x-

It’s six hours from takeoff when the plane touches down, and the pilot informs them that Las Vegas, Nevada is a balmy 82 degrees. Shitty gets down the stairs first, where he’s greeted by a broad blonde man standing a few yards off the runway in a tank top and backwards snapback.

He hasn’t seen Kent since the 2009 job, and he’s thinner now. His face is a little more gaunt, and he doesn’t have the same presence that he did then. The confidence that Shitty found so remarkable isn’t here anymore, and all Shitty can do is think that maybe some of the rumors were right. Kent genuinely looks like he’s gone through rehab and is still struggling to curb an addiction. He knows it isn’t true, he and Kent actually talked often enough over the last two years to know that Kent wasn’t in rehab, but he can’t help the little nagging thought that sticks up in the back of his head: maybe he should have been.

“Good flight?” Kent asks, pushing his sunglasses a little further up his face to better shield himself.

“It was good,” Shitty answers, turning to see the rest of the group coming towards them, only slightly wary. “I’ll introduce everyone. Lardo, our fabulous chemist, who will be cooking up something that will knock both you and your socks off. Ransom and Holster, our forgers, twice the deception and double the fun. And last but not least, our architect, Bitty,” he finishes, motioning to where Bitty was struggling with his bags before going to help. “Guys, this is–”

“You know who I am,” Kent says, not meanly, turning away from them and towards the SUV that’s waiting for them only a little ways off.

“When is the extractor arriving?” Holster asks, after looking around and doing a final count that comes up one short.

Kent pauses, glancing back at them carelessly. “They’re not. I’m the extractor for this job.”

-x-

Bitty isn’t sure what he expected them to be staying in, but a penthouse suite that spans the entire top floor of Kent Parson’s building wasn’t it. Maybe Bitty was thinking that they’d stay in a hotel or rent a house. It’s a long job, renting something by the month wouldn’t be the worst idea. Whatever it was, he certainly hadn’t been thinking that they’d actually stay with Kent.

The apartment has six bedrooms, one for each of them, and when Ransom thanks Kent for opening up where he lives to them, Kent just shrugs. “You guys need to know a lot about me for this. I figured that space wouldn’t exactly help with the process.”

No one questions him, even though he still hasn’t said anything directly about the job. He’s the extractor, and they’re going to need to know a lot about him. Other than that, he’s tight-lipped on the subject, and Bitty doesn’t really know what to think. They’ve been in Vegas for two days and haven’t even so much as touched a PASIV. What’s more is that Kent doesn’t seem inclined to start the job, whatever it is.

He corners Shitty about it on the third day, because this is getting ridiculous. Bitty is a professional, and he’s here to do a job. As much fun as hanging around Vegas and doing nothing is, it’s a nice vacation but he came here to work. Besides, if he took a vacation on his own time, he’d go to the beach. Or to a Beyoncé concert.

“I thought you said he had a job,” he says to Shitty that afternoon, looking out onto the rooftop terrace where Holster and Ransom are trying to dunk each other in the pool. Lardo is laying by the side, lowering her sunglasses to glare at them when they get water on her.

Shitty nods. “He does. We’ll get started eventually.” He sounds infinitely patient, which is fine and all, but Bitty is getting antsy. Seeming to sense Bitty’s restlessness, Shitty continues, “Look, the guy says that we need to know him pretty well. He’s letting us stay in his apartment, and you haven’t even been trying to talk to him. Why don’t you get to know him, like he said? Maybe he’s just waiting until we’re all comfortable with each other before we start.”

That might be one of the stupidest ways of going about something that Bitty’s ever heard of. It’s true that teams work together best when they’re familiar with each other, but there often isn’t enough time in most jobs for everyone to become best friends before going under together. He’s been working with Ransom, Holster, Shitty, and Lardo since college and they’re probably one of the best teams since Dominic Cobb’s, so if Kent’s waiting on them to get acquainted then they’re already done here.

“Shitty, you walked around naked most every day that we lived together for two years. I don’t know how much more comfortable I can get with you,” Bitty deadpans, smiling when Lardo finally abandons her poolside chair and cannonballs into the water.

Nodding satisfactorily, Shitty grins before it fades into a more serious expression. “He knows we’re all comfortable with each other. He’s waiting until we’re comfortable with him.” He motions around the apartment, which is in a shabby state of clean. It’s decorated with expensive items that don’t seem to go together, and it isn’t until Bitty’s looked over the entire room that he realizes there are no personal artifacts in it. No framed photos, nothing that looks like someone would have given it as a gift.

It almost looks as though it’s designed to be comfortable without being comforting. Bitty eyes Shitty carefully and then shrugs, getting up to go onto the terrace where it’s warm. In the last few minutes, he’s gotten chilly.

-x-

Kent’s speaking in rapid French on the phone when he notices that the architect has been watching him from the kitchen. Immediately stopping, he pauses to listen to the voice on the other line before realizing it’s best to end the conversation. People in dreamsharing speak different languages all the time, it wouldn’t be farfetched for Bittle to know French. It’s a bit of a stretch to think he’d be able to translate Quebecois, but even still.

Having all these people around the apartment is putting him on edge, and he can’t be hiding it all that well. That’s what he gathers, at least, when he goes quiet for a moment and suddenly the conversation is over with. Did he stop in the middle of a sentence? He can’t even tell anymore.

“ _Bonne journée. Tu es notre fils aussi bien_ ,” Alicia tells him, voice soft and tone firm and so reminiscent of Jack that Kent aches, hanging up. It’s the same thing that she’s been telling him for years and it still makes his throat close up so he never says anything after. Even still, he thinks she knows what it does. The first time she’d said it, Jack had been standing behind her, taller than his mother even when she wore heels, absolutely beaming. At first, it was the feeling of family that got to him. He’d left his behind when he went into dream sharing, and Jack had been lucky enough to have parents in the business to where he hadn’t had to give up anyone.

At first, he’d been choked up about it because he thought that he might get to have a family again. Now he gets choked up about it because he knows he never will.

And somehow, it can still make him feel better. Maybe that’s why she keeps saying it.

Shutting his eyes for a moment, Kent puts his phone in his pocket before turning and nodding at Bittle. It almost feels like a standoff, because he doesn’t want Bittle here. He doesn’t really want any of them here, but another architect means that he actually needs this. “Need help finding something?” he asks at last, because he might as well be a good host.

“Oh, towels. Lardo just got out of the pool, I didn’t want her dripping on the carpet when she came in,” Bittle says, following Kent to the linen closet. He hesitates, even after Kent’s gotten the towel out and given it to him. “Do you have friends in France?” he asks, like he almost can’t help himself.

Kent doesn’t answer right away, because he does have friends in France right now. That is, if people he hasn’t spoken to in two years would still consider him a friend. And the Zimmermanns aren’t in France, anyway. He’s so relieved that Bittle doesn’t recognize a Quebecois accent that he answers, “Family,” before he can stop himself.

Turning back to his room, Kent runs a hand through his hair and shuts the door behind him. He’d known that he’d have to be honest with these people for this to work, but it feels like too much. It all feels like just too much.

-x-

They’re well into their first week when Shitty goes to ask Parse if he wants to join in a game of water polo when he opens the door and sees him hooked up to a PASIV, his cat curled up protectively against his ribs.

He doesn’t think about it, just grabs a line and hooks himself up, welcoming the familiar feeling of being rocked to sleep until his sleep becomes a dream reality. Parse’s landscape is city buildings next to a beach, and Shitty wonders how big this place actually is. It might take longer than he thought to find him.

It turns out, it’s not that hard. He wanders around a few streets near the coast, and he can still hear the waves even when he’s inside the shops. He’s considering turning back to the ocean but he catches sight of a blonde who’s hurrying down the sidewalk, chasing after a tall man that isn’t facing Shitty. Even still, his stomach drops, because he remembers how Parse convinced him that it was a job that needed doing.

Tailing them through an alleyway, the man in front doesn’t seem to be hurrying. Kent does, and he looks angry and, like they’ve been arguing about something and he already knows how it’s going to end. It isn’t until Shitty’s close enough that he actually can make out what they’re talking about.

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about these people being around. They don’t have to be,” says a voice that instantly makes Shitty wish he’d stayed topside.

“They do, actually, because I really can’t do this anymore. Do you think this is healthy? For me to be wandering around my mind, talking to you when you’re dead?” Kent demands.

“That isn’t healthy, but it’s not because I’m dead! I’m alive, I’m just a level up, and you can’t seem to accept that. It’s a dream, Kent, wake up and shoot yourself and it will all be over,” the man snarls, turning around to reveal Jack Zimmermann, desperate and angry.

Kent shuffles, coming to a stop. Jack hears him and stops, too, only a few feet ahead. “You’re dead. You died because you thought we were still dreaming. It wasn’t Limbo anymore, Jack. You just couldn’t believe me.” He looks crushed and fishes in his pocket for something, pulling out a gun.

Shuddering but unmoving, Jack stands in front of him and frowns. “Do you think I would have left you if I wasn’t convinced that we were wrong? Do you think I would have given up our life unless I knew that it wasn’t actually our life?” he demands, quiet and unrelenting. His face softens and he reaches out for Kent’s hand, taking the one that isn’t carrying the gun.

This is the part where Shitty has to make himself known, because he can’t stay in here until Kent wakes up. People left behind once the dreamer exits their own dream don’t come back the same. Shitty’s read enough research papers on the apocalyptic situations that take place afterwards to know that he doesn’t want to hang around after that gun goes off.

“Kenny,” Jack whispers, and this isn’t any version of the Jack Zimmermann that Shitty met while on assignment, but it must be a version of him that Parse is intimately familiar with because the shade doesn’t waver. It looks absolutely convincing, and even Shitty wants to believe him. This thing that Kent has dreamed up, running on memories and fantasies, this thing looks so real that it almost hurts to remember it’s not. And if it feels that way for Shitty, he can’t even imagine how Kent must be feeling.

“Parse,” Shitty shouts, because Kent’s finger is on the trigger and this cityscape is going to hell in handbasket at any moment now and Shitty’s not going with it. Kent stiffens and then turns, face guarded. He doesn’t even hesitate before pointing the gun at Shitty and firing.

Removing the IV, Shitty waits a moment before Parse stirs beside him, his face masked in the same way. He doesn’t seem to feel inclined to share anything, so it looks like it’s up to Shitty.

“You told me to come get you if I ever saw you hooked up by yourself,” he states. It’d been something that confused him at first, because most people in dream sharing go down alone. It’s best to make sure that everything’s right that way, but now he understands. Kent doesn’t even nod, just stares at him unfeelingly. “Parse, man, what the fuck was that?”

Because Shitty’s seen shades before, but Jack hadn’t just seemed like a shade. He hadn’t been angry. Well, he had been, but his purpose wasn’t to be angry, and that’s always been the case that Shitty’s read about and seen before. Jack had seemed like, well, like himself. Business as usual kind of stuff, even if he was convincing Kent that his reality was a dream instead of convincing Shitty why their information gathering tactics had to be even more subtle than normal. And then he’d been a Jack that Shitty hadn’t seen before, but Shitty doesn’t doubt it was any less real.

Kent stiffens beside him and then scowls. “That’s what I need you to get rid of,” he snaps, coiling the IVs back into the case and snapping it shut.

-x-

“We need you to design the dream,” Kent starts, pointing to Bittle before turning back to the board. Bittle’s just about to make some kind of smart remark about being the architect when Kent interrupts him. “The problem is, you’re going to be designing at least three levels, and the third one I’ll be the dreamer for. I just can’t know about the design.” He turns back and arches an eyebrow at the blonde, who looks like he doesn’t know how he’s going to make that happen.

Well, tough cookies, because Kent doesn’t know either. That’s why they’re all here.

Motioning to Ransom and Holster, he informs them, “As our resident forgers, you two here will be, as you’ve probably guessed, forging. Consider Shitty here in charge of getting you as much information as he can, since we don’t really need a point man as much on this job. I know I’m going to be dreaming, because there’s no other way that I can do this. Basically, Shitty, don’t do your job. If I feel like I’m in reality instead of a dream, we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands.” Running through the list again, he nods at Lardo’s name before turning to her, finally relaxed. “And your job is to drug us up. If you’ve got some extra time on your hands, feel free to find a combo that will knock my subconscious out, because that would make this a hell of a lot easier.”

She rolls her eyes but nods nonetheless, and, as a show of good faith she even puts her hands up. “I mean, if I can do that and you still be fine being under, we’ll see. Can’t knock you out totally.”

Kent yawns and nods, pulling his shoulders back a little bit to stretch them. “Any questions?” he asks at last, ready to have a full day of work in front of them tomorrow. It’s certainly not going to get done overnight, but the sooner they start, the sooner he can go back to normal. Whatever normal means for him now.

Holster squints at the board and adjusts his glasses. “Uh, yeah. Just who, exactly, are we forging?”

Ah, yes. The last piece of the puzzle that Kent was trying so desperately to avoid putting into place. He shrugs, trains his expression into the uncaring mask that he’s been wearing for the last two years and answers, “Jack Zimmermann.”

Holster and Ransom trade mirrored looks of something that Kent can’t identify, but he’s more preoccupied by the way that Bittle’s staring him down. “Bittle?” he asks finally.

“What’s our job here?” the blonde asks, crossing his arms.

He looks so defensive, and Kent wants to inform him that, no, actually, he’s not allowed to be defensive, because Kent’s the only one here who gets to be defensive. He restrains himself, though. “I have a shade, and we’re going to remove it.” It’s fairly obvious who his shade is, so no one asks, and he’s thankful for that, at least. Bittle’s gone quiet, and Shitty is the only one meeting his eyes now. Capping his pen, Kent sets it next to the board and retreats back to his room.

-x-

The plans needs three levels. That’s what he and Shitty decided on, at least. Three levels, which means one level above Limbo, which means one level away from the place that Kent never wants to see again.

Holster and Ransom are working on becoming Jack, and Kent interrupted one of their training sessions once to find two droopy-eyed Canadians staring back at him. He’d shot himself and hasn’t gone back under if it’s just the two of them. Because he knows that he’s always going to be able to recognize Jack. Even if they get the accent perfect, even if they’re just as professional as he was on the job, they’re never going to be able to get it right.

Kent doesn’t want them to get it right. He wants them to get it close enough that his mind understands that Jack isn’t real and doesn’t need to be there anymore. He needs for Jack to stop lurking around in his subconscious, ready to come out at any moment. He needs for his mind to stop having an autoimmune disorder and start attacking Jack instead of accepting him as a part of this reality.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do it,” Shitty confesses to him one night, when they’re looking over dream levels.

Kent doesn’t flinch, even though he wants to. “We have to,” he responds evenly, flipping through his notebook. “I’m never going to be able to dream again. You don’t understand, Shitty. For me, this isn’t an option anymore. I don’t want to live like this anymore.” Finding the line he wants, he copies down the list of drugs that Lardo’s reported she’s going to need. There are notes next to each, question marks next to some, but that doesn’t bother him.

It’s something no one’s ever done before. No one’s ever gotten rid of a shade, even Dominic Cobb hadn’t been able to do that. Kent knows that it might not be possible, but at this point it kind of has to be.

Shitty still looks unsure, so Kent presses the point home.

“Before any of this happened, I had dream share and I had Jack. Jack’s gone, whether my head wants to believe it or not, and I can’t dream anymore. You knows that people with shades can’t be architects. The shade destroys the plan. I don’t have anything like this,” he says, and the words come out raw but there’s no stopping them now. “I lost Jack, and I can’t get him back. I just want my work back.”

Shitty nods, solemn. “Tell me about how you and Jack met,” he says, which hadn’t been what Kent was expecting at all.

Caught off guard, Kent can’t help but answer. “We were in college. He was a history major and I was in architecture, but we didn’t meet at school. I went to Boston Architectural College, and he was at Samwell. We met at the Old State House in Boston. I was looking at early eighteenth century structure, and Jack was there for the history.” He can still remember how they’d met when Kent was stretching some of the arches and Jack had asked him how he was catching the light.

His tips hadn’t translated all that well into photography, but Jack got some good shots anyway. Kent had always suspected that Jack had already known how to get the light the way he wanted it.

“When did you go into dream sharing?” Shitty asks.

“My professor had apparently been involved in it for a while. He told some friends about me, and the next thing I knew, Dominic Cobb was at my door, asking if I wanted to create things I’d never even dreamed of before.”

“You said yes?”

“Who wouldn’t?” Kent knows that dream sharing is what got Jack killed and Kent going almost crazy, but remembering that first time always feels so magical. His first dream, real enough that he could touch it. Anything the way that he wanted it, and even if he didn’t want it that way it was a representation of his subconscious. Standing beside Cobb as Cobb had explained everything, Kent had never felt so important.

Quiet for a moment, Shitty asks finally, “How did Jack get involved?”

And this memory isn’t as freeing as the last one, because Kent doesn’t know if he’s the reason why Jack went into dreamsharing. His parents had been involved, and they’d showed him, but he’d been more interested in teaching, so he’d gone to college.

Somewhere out there, Jack is a history professor, and Kent is an architect. Kent really hopes they’re happy like that. He hopes that they’re happy together.

Bob and Alicia had introduced him to dream sharing, but Kent’s probably the one responsible for Jack going into it. And if he’s the one that convinced Jack to go into dream sharing, he’s the one that got Jack killed. “We were best friends, we did everything together. When I got my first PASIV, I went to show him.” He licks his lips, remembering how Jack had gone in wild eyed and come out serious, explaining that they needed to make it more like reality, finally admitting that it’s what his parents had done for years. From there, Kent told Cobb, who was mad at Kent for spilling what were basically government classified secrets, and then he’d introduced Jack to Arthur.

Arthur had taken one look at Jack and then said, “Bob told me you weren’t interested.” He hadn’t held a grudge, though, and Jack became an apprentice like Kent. School during the day, dreaming at night, gathering all the information they could.

And if Kent had liked dreaming by himself, it was nothing compared to how he and Jack dreamed together. Where Kent had built houses, for Jack he built cities. Parks became forests, lakes became oceans. Worlds that never would have met in reality were, to Kent, only a dream level away. And Jack had been such a perfectionist, so detail oriented, so well-suited to it that Kent had wondered how Jack could have ever been anything else. “He was a natural, really,” he says quietly, because he was.

Shitty nods, looks around as if trying to figure out if he has any more questions. He probably has tons, Kent reasons, and he’s just trying to figure out the ones that are the least offensive to ask. Finally, Shitty asks, “Why Las Vegas? I thought you’d still be Quebec. At least somewhere out east.”

It’s not a hard question to answer. “Jack would have hated it here,” Kent reasons.

Shitty claps him on the back and stands to take his leave. “We’re going to do this, Parson. I don’t know how, but we’re going to find a way. I promise.”

Kent wishes he could believe it.

-x-

Bitty doesn’t know why Parson even hired him. In everything so far, they haven’t needed architecture. And he knows he’s making a bigger deal of it than it needs to be, because Kent really can’t see his architecture until they’re actually in the dream in case the shade decides to make an appearance. So he takes to working alone usually, which is fine. The actual building of these things takes time and can be tedious to anyone.

Anyone doesn’t happen to include Lardo, who walks around the area with him. It’s winding, but maybe not enough of a maze. She shrugs when he tells her that.

“The first two levels really aren’t that important. That’s what Shitty and I were talking about last night, at least. The third level is where Parson really expects Jack to be, especially if he’s the dreamer. So, honestly, you could just set up rooms for us to land in the top two and we’d be fine.”

“Oh my gosh, I couldn’t ever let y’all just have a room. I am an architect, not an interior designer,” Bitty objects. “I might design small-scale for the top two, but we’re at least going to be in a high rise or a park. Something big,” he promises, looking down the alley for entrances and exits. “Think I’ll need to knock that fence down back there?” he asks, pointing to the end.

“Only if we end up running from something,” she tells him, looking at how the fire escape on the adjacent building isn’t really close enough to make a getaway with.

Nodding, Bitty makes a mental note. With some things, it’s better just to be prepared.

-x-

The problem isn’t going to be in the first or second level.

It’s going to be in the third one.

The first level will be Lardo’s dream, and the second level will be either Ransom’s or Holster’s. They’ve been playing rock, paper, scissors so far to decide who gets it.

The third level is Kent’s.

The problem, he explains to Bitty, is that the third level can’t not be his dream. For them to find the source of the shade and actually get rid of it, it has to be his so that he can fill the level. Only he can’t know the layout.

“The shade is going to know whatever you do, so why can’t we try it being someone else’s dream and having your projections populate it instead? That way, you don’t know the layout, the shade doesn’t know the layout, and none of us drop into limbo,” Bitty says, pinching his nose as he looks down at the sprawling alleyways in his notebook.

Kent resists sighing, because it doesn’t help. He’s exasperated, everyone knows it, and pushing his bad attitude onto the other members of the team certainly isn’t going to make anything good happen. He folds his hands and stares at the wall. “How can my projections populate the dream if it isn’t my dream?” he asks sagely, wondering what he could possibly have done in a past life to deserve this.

Across the table, Bitty sighs. Kent does a mental fist pump for not being the first person to break.

“Well, how am I supposed to be able to design the dreamscape when the dreamer can’t even know the design?” he demands. Which, okay, fair question, Kent admits. This is probably why no one has been able to remove a shade, because it’s too damn complicated.

Standing, he grabs a beer on the end of the table and pops it with ease. “I don’t know, but considering that this is what I’m paying you for, you should get started on figuring it out,” he announces, walking out of the room and onto the terrace, shedding his shirt when Ransom yells at him that they’re going to play chicken in the pool.

Before the door shuts behind him, he hears Bitty yell, “You haven’t paid me yet!”

Kent gives a laugh, diving into the deep end.

-x-

Ransom and Holster are so close with Jack that it’s almost eerie. The thing that gives them away, every time, is that Jack wasn’t always in professional mode. That’s how he was when they worked with him, but that’s because they were always on the job around each other. He and Kent were professionals around each other while on the job, but they weren’t always on the job. They were off the job a lot more than people thought.

“You’re too… Too harsh,” Kent decides, Ransom’s features flickering before him underneath a shallow vision of Jack that’s begun to fade.

“Jack was harsh,” Holster mentions, kicking his legs up onto the table at the café Ransom has placed them in. Holster looks so comfortable in Ransom’s dream that it’s almost unnerving. Things feel almost clinical to him, which makes sense when he considers the fact he’d heard Ransom had wanted to be a doctor before switching into dream sharing.

Other people’s minds always feel off, somehow. Even in Jack’s mind, Kent thought things were too detailed. There was so much effort put into everything that Kent had found taxing and Jack hadn’t minded at all. Then again, Jack told Kent that Kent’s dreams were too smooth, too shiny. “It’s like someone dumped varnish on everything,” he’d said once, and Kent still doesn’t know if he was meant to take it as it came or if there were layers of meaning behind the words. If it’s the latter, he’s never figured it out.

Stirring his coffee, Kent wrinkles his nose. “Jack was harsh because he was a professional. The problem is that I don’t think of him as professional when I think about him. He was serious, but he wasn’t severe. He was my best friend, but when I think of him, I don’t think of him doing research.” It feels like a hopeless cause, because no one knew Jack as well as him. They’re not going to be able to pull this off.

Ransom nods at Holster before looking back to Kent, no hint of Jack on him anymore. “We never saw Jack as anything but professional. Can you show us?” Ransom asks, carefully, like he thinks Kent is going to run away.

He may want to, but that’s not really an option anymore. Kent looks up at the sky, watches the clouds roll through. It’s going to storm soon, he realizes, and he wonders which one of them is causing it.

Kent nods, finally, watching how Holster and Ransom are very carefully not reacting around him. It’s clear they hadn’t expected it, but Kent stands and leads them away from the café, stopping at an ATM and pulling a PASIV out while Holster chuckles.

“Got any hotels down here?” Kent asks, because hotels are always the best place to use a PASIV. Ransom leads the way, until they’re on the top floor of a five star hotel and he’s using a key that was left on the floor.

In the room, Kent is quick to uncoil the IVs and measure out the drugs. He’s no chemist, but one level doesn’t take much. They could fall asleep and it work the same, probably, but he’s not taking any chances. They all get their IVs in, and then Kent turns on the machine, watching the slow drip go into his arm before he’s waking up in his own mind.

It’s Boston, or some version of it. Kent hasn’t seen it in a few years, and it’s always changing, but this is Boston as he best remembers it, twenty one and free, new to dream sharing and all the possibilities that it presented. And he hadn’t been thinking of Boston, not really, not planning any real place to come out. If pressed, he’d probably say he thought they’d end up in Montreal.

“Boston?” Holster asks, and Kent nods, taking off his hat briefly to mess up his hair before putting it back.

The thing is, Jack doesn’t always function like a shade. Sometimes he seeks Kent out, but, a lot of the time, Kent seeks him out. It never takes long before he find Jack standing in line at a coffee shop or studying in the park, making notes that are actually color coded. Kent thinks that he should probably be disturbed that it’s always been so easy, but he’s never been disturbed by it. He’s reassured, as though his subconscious is telling him he still remembers Jack in all the right ways. As though it’s saying to him, don’t worry, he’s not that far away.

Sure enough, at the corner of Hammond and Tremont streets, Jack is standing in front of the mural of Frederick Douglass. He only looks up when Kent’s a few feet away. Ransom and Holster are standing near them, determined to not say anything. Kent’s sure that it’s the first time they’ve seen someone’s shade.

“Hey,” Jack greets, and even though he knows it isn’t real, Kent gives a half smile and stands next to him.

“Do you think you’ll ever get tired of looking at this thing?” Kent asks, because he remembers so many afternoons standing by the mural, listening to Jack talk about history. They’d go to the Museum of World War II, only a few miles out, and they’d spend the rest of the day wandering around the city. And it feels almost like old times, which hurts a bit more than it ought to.

Jack reaches up, tugs Kent’s hat off and messes up his hair before putting it back. “Maybe. Probably not. What’s up?”

Kent’s tempted to raise his voice so that Ransom and Holster are sure to hear him as he answers, “I brought some people here to show off how much your death messed me up.” Instead, he shrugs, bumping their shoulders together. “I was in the area.”

It’s obvious that Jack doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t call Kent on it. He just looks back and notices the two guys trying very hard to look inconspicuous as they gape openly at the two dudes in front of a mural. “You brought friends down?”

“Wait, he knows you’re dreaming?” Holster asks, eyes wide.

This is the part that Kent’s never really understood, either. Jack is always aware that he’s a projection of Kent’s mind. He is never under the impression that he is a real person who has free will, he just says that Kent’s subconscious gives him that impression sometimes.

Nodding, Kent pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. He lets Jack take this question.

“He doesn’t see me unless he’s hooked up to the PASIV,” Jack answers, watching Kent carefully. “You haven’t brought people down here before. Shitty was here that one time, but you didn’t want him to be, eh?”

“So if you’re really aware that you’re a projection, does that mean you’re really a shade?” Ransom inquires.

Jack sighs, rolling his eyes and giving Kent a look. “I keep telling you I’m not a shade,” he says, because it’s true. They’ve discussed it many times.

“Jack, you’re dead and appearing in my mind. Sorry, buddy, that makes you a shade,” Kent says, a tightness to his mouth that wasn’t there before.

Holster and Ransom are completely baffled, but Kent couldn’t care less about them right now.

“What it makes me is a representation of myself, because some part of you clearly understands that I was right and we weren’t in reality. I’m here because you want to be with me, and I’m trying to make that happen!” Jack exclaims, pulling Kent in and tightening his hands on Kent’s shirt. “You know I’m right, because I wouldn’t have left you. I wouldn’t have left you alone.”

Kent closes his eyes and forces himself to nod. That much he’s accepted as true, that Jack killed himself because he genuinely thought that they weren’t topside. “I had to watch you die,” he whispers, the words edging out even as he tries to keep them inside. He doesn’t want to go through this. Not again.

“You’ve watched me die before. That time wasn’t any different,” Jack says, but even he looks affected.

“Don’t you think that’s fucked up, though? That we’ve seen each other die so many times that it shouldn’t even bother me? And it wasn’t just you blowing your brains out, you know! Pills. You’ve never used pills to get out of a dream before, because I think even you knew that you weren’t just going up a level. You never would have used something as slow-acting. A bullet, a grenade, maybe then I could see where you’re coming from, but it wasn’t those. It was slow, and the roads were jammed so the ambulance got there too late. They pumped your stomach while you were unconscious and you died an hour later, don’t you get it?” Kent demands, because it’s important that he at least get his point across.

Jack reaches and smooths a hand across Kent’s back. “I’m sorry you had to watch that. I know it wasn’t easy on you,” he whispers, gentle as ever, and the only thing that Kent wants more than to be right is he wants to be wrong. He wants to be wrong so badly, he wants to get out of this dream and back to Vegas and shoot himself, and maybe then he’ll wake up next to Jack, who’s been next to him this whole time.

He wants to be wrong so badly.

He leans over and picks up a handgun off the ground, cocking it effortlessly. Holster and Ransom nod at him before he shoots them, and then he’s left with Jack. “It’s been two years, and I still want you so much,” he says, leaning further into the heat from Jack’s body.

“You can still have me, Kenny,” Jack whispers, pressing their lips together just before the gun goes off.

Back on Ransom’s level, Kent pulls the IV out of his arm and looks at Holster and Ransom defiantly. “Too harsh,” he snaps, stomach settling into a knot as he tugs a gun out from underneath the pillow and shoots himself out of the dream.

-x-

The first person he told about the shade was Alicia. Thousands of miles away, in a hotel room somewhere in California, Kent had called her and when she’d finally picked up the phone he thought she was going to tell him that she and Bob never wanted to hear from him again.

Alicia had cried, and she was angry like he’d expected, but she told him he had to call her once a month. Either her or Bob, it didn’t matter, but he had to call. She didn’t care what time it was, he had to call once a month and at least leave a voicemail saying that he was well. She told him that he couldn’t just leave the county without warning and not call to tell her about it. “My son is dead, Kent, and you made me think you were, too,” she snapped at him, and that’s when he’d understood why she was so angry. “You should have called sooner.”

“I thought you’d blame me,” he whispered, because he still couldn’t figure that part out. He was the one who convinced Jack that they should try to go into Limbo, and it’s his fault they stayed too long, and it’s his fault that Jack hadn’t gotten to the hospital early enough. Jack was gone, and Kent’s totem kept telling him that it wasn’t something he could wake up from.

“How could I blame you? You were the only thing that kept him here for so long,” she told him, and she sounded how Kent felt. Aching in a way that she didn’t know could be fixed, an open wound that was still bleeding sluggishly.

The thing was, Kent thought if that was true, he should have been able to keep Jack longer. He didn’t know how to say that, though, so instead he said, “I’m sorry I left.” That wasn’t true, though, so he modified it. “I’m sorry I left without telling you.”

Alicia sighed, and the phone line sounded full of water, ready to drain out the speaker and drown Kent like he’d been praying for over the past weeks. “Do not tell you’re sorry. Tell me why you called.” Because Kent wouldn’t have called to catch up, and she knew it must have been hard to pick up the phone.

“I used my PASIV last night. Jack is my shade,” Kent said, the words rushing out as quickly as he could manage.

There’s a pause, and for a moment Kent though she’d hung up on him, but then Alicia sighed, soft and sad, and Kent hunched into himself in anticipation of what was to come. “Mon cheri,” she started, “I am so sorry.”

That was all he wanted to hear, and Kent put a hand over his face and tried hard not to cry. He thought of his own mother, somewhere in New York with his little sister. They hadn’t heard from him in years, all because he’d be fascinated by something that was too good to be true. That’s what he’d thought, at least, and he’d been right. Jack was gone, so was his family, and all he had left was the shade of his best friend. He’d never be able to work again.

They stayed on the line a while longer. “I’ll talk to Bob, we’ll find someone to help. We’ve been in the business for years, we’ll know someone, you know we’ll know someone,” she comforted him, but Kent felt hollow. He’d trained with Dominic Cobb, he knew the thing about shades was there was nothing to be done.

Silence permeated the line. “ _Tu es notre fils aussi bien_ ,” Alicia sighed, the words wrapped around him and settling in his bones. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything to that; guilt filled him up and if he opened his mouth it would have come spilling out. “ _Bonne journée_ ,” she finally said, hanging up after a moment.

Kent set his phone aside and buried himself in the covers, praying that he’d wake up after timing out on the PASIV. Jack would be there, and they’d go get lunch from the café down the road.

-x-

Shitty’s the first one to bring up Kent’s past experience. “You’re militarized,” he says, no doubt about it, and Kent just nods. If he was going to be in the business, he’d need to be able to protect himself. He’s never had a problem with his own projections, one notable exception aisde, simply because he doesn’t mess around in his dreams to the point where the projections would become disturbed.

“We’re all militarized,” Shitty explains, sighing and looking around. “Great, just great.” Standing, he turns to Bitty and asks, “Do you know if the frogs have anything going on for the next few weeks?”

“The frogs?” Kent asks.

Bitty and Shitty ignore this question, as does everyone else. “I think one of them in is Mumbai for the next two weeks, but I can make some calls. When do you need them here by?” Bitty asks, flipping through contacts on his phone.

“The frogs?” Kent repeats, because what?

“Two weeks is good, we can probably manage by ourselves until then, but we’re definitely going to need them for the third level. This is why people within dream share aren’t the ones needing the jobs. It makes everything so much harder,” Shitty bemoans, scratching absentmindedly at his mustache. Holster nods empathetically, Lardo rolls his eyes, and Ransom just shakes his head. Meanwhile, Bitty has pulled out a laptop and Kent is still trying to figure out what’s going on.

Holster stands up and Shitty is walking towards the kitchen, and Kent bursts out with, one last time, “The frogs?”

Smiling, Shitty claps him on the back. “You’re gonna love them, man.”

-x-

‘The frogs’ turn out to be a team of three guys who are what have become known as enforcers. They are all tall, smell like cheap beer, and look like they stumbled over to Kent’s apartment by accident. One of them, the one everyone keeps calling ‘Nursey’, keeps a loaded Glock 17 on him at all times, safety off. The other two don’t so much as flinch when he takes it out.

In short, Kent does not what to think of them.

The pale redheaded one seems to sense this and approaches him first. “I’m William, you can call me Dex,” and Kent’s about to point out that those names have nothing to do with each other when the one with the Glock comes up and says, “I’m Derek, call me Nursey.” That doesn’t make sense either, but Kent’s less inclined to say as much to someone with a loaded weapon, and then the last one runs up to him, beaming, and says, “Oh my gosh, you’re Kent Parson!”

Kent blinks, because what.

The last guy continues, “I’m Chris, but you can call me Chowder, everyone does!”

Kent blinks again, trying to get some of his bearings back. They all look so young. Like high school kids, maybe undergraduates at the latest. He goes to introduce himself, even though at least of them obviously knows who he is, but what comes out instead is, “None of your names make sense.”

He knows that he’s been out of the game two years, and dream share moves fast, sure, but they’d started letting in teenagers? What are these guys, twenty at the most? Sure, that’s when he got in, but he wasn’t taking missions and being contracted out until he’d gotten his bachelor’s. Does he need to read up on child labor laws to make sure these kids can even be here?

They ignore him in lieu of bounding up to Shitty and telling him about what they’ve been up to recently. They behave like brothers, though it’s pretty obvious none of them are related, talking other each other and bickering good naturedly about which way the stories actually went. All of the tales sound outlandish, and Kent wouldn’t believe any of them except for the fact that they work in dream share and pretty much anything is possible. He knows better than to discount even the most wild of accounts.

Enforcers aren’t exactly a foreign concept to him, even though he’s never worked with any before. They’re used to ensure that projections are taken care of and the operation can go on smoothly. In short, they’re there to make sure nothing happens in the dream to the people who get hooked up to PASIVs and can’t protect themselves.

The problem is, these guys don’t really seem like enforcers.

He mentions it to Shitty and Bitty that night, when they’re out on the terrace going over who’s going to be dreaming what level now that they have the extra people.

Bitty arches an eyebrow and looks down, smiling to himself. Shitty just grins wildly and shakes his head. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” he promises, and Kent isn’t sure whether that’s comforting or not.

-x-

Two days after the frogs arrive (Kent still doesn’t know that’s why they’re called that, and there are some thing he’s accepted he’s just better off not knowing), Shitty decides that they need to give it their first run through.

They won’t go down to the third level, because Kent and Bitty are still arguing about whether it’d be easier for Kent to put his projections on someone else’s dream or for Bitty to project his architecture onto someone else’s dream. They stay up often arguing about it, and as of yet no one knows which way it’s going to go. All Kent knows is that they need a solution, because this is taking too long and Jack still wandering around the cities in his head. They have debates about philosophy when he’s lonely enough to visit.

Lardo’s level is first, and it should be a very cut and dry kind of thing. She deposits them into a room with a PASIV, they go down to the next level and leave her and Nursey there to chill and watch just to make sure none of her projections get angry. For the next level, it’s decided that Dex will be the dreamer instead of Holster or Ransom. Kent wants them both in the third level with Jack, so that the three of them together should confuse him enough to the point where his mind understands that none of it is real. The third level will be Kent’s, depending on what he and Bitty can work out between them.

The PASIV is set up, and they’re using Shitty’s because it’s the newest model and actually has enough IVs for everyone. Lardo fixes everyone up with the right kind of cocktail for their unconscious journey through their subconscious, and then they’re all drifting to off.

Kent is in a field of tall grass, and he’s wiping the dew from his legs when he looks around and notices that he doesn’t see anyone else. And he’s heard that some people, when using the PASIV with multiple people drop them all off in different locations, it’s never actually happened to him before.

Looking around, the field isn’t actually all that big, and there’s a forest on one side and a building on the other. Big, very few windows, smoke stacks on the top, it looks like an old warehouse. Kent takes a moment to be thankful he was at least dropped in sight of the building and now somewhere like the middle of the forest. Because that has to be where everyone’s gathering, it’s the only real mark of civilization in this place.

The ground is damp and the air smells like rain, and Kent is always amazed at how people’s senses can be so different. Even when he would do outdoor landscapes, he was never able to get it right. Jack always had to be the one reminding him to think of how grass felt between his toes, how the wind could nearly knock his hat off if he didn’t keep a hand on the brim. Kent was never good at those things, but he could the big picture. It was the details that always tripped him up. Whenever he’d mention it, Jack would always bump their shoulders together and say, “That’s what I’m here for.”

He stops thinking about that, focusing on getting towards the warehouse. He can hear voices, but can’t quite make out who they belong to. It almost sounds like an argument, but the closer he gets he realizes that they’re laughing, whoever they are.

It’s Shitty and Lardo, leaning by the door and smiling at each other in a way that hurts to look at. And Kent suspected there was something going on there, but he knows it’s hard to work out. Out of so many people in dreamshare who tried to make things work, as far as he knows he and Jack are the only ways that ever did.

Past tense. Because they’re not a love story anymore, and Kent was crazy to think they could have been in the first place.

“What gives with the random distribution?” he calls, distracting Shitty and Lardo from each other. Shitty laughs and Lardo rolls her eyes at both him and Kent, giving a good-natured shrug. “I mean, thanks for not putting us by a volcano, I guess, but thought for a second there that I was going to have to spend the whole day wandering around in your head without you.”

Lardo stretches a little bit, smirking. “I never send people too far away. Just enough to where they can still find me,” she tells him, and then glances back at the door. “Come on, I think most everyone’s here already.”

She’s right. Inside the room, Ransom and Holster are sitting in lounge chairs, their legs crossed over each other, and they’re pointing up at the constellations painted on the ceiling. The kid that Kent is supposed to call Chowder is leaning against the chair, and Nursey is leaning out the window, yelling something at the ground. Now that he, Lardo, and Shitty are inside, the only people missing are… William, or Dex, whatever. Dex and Bitty.

The Dex problem is solved momentarily when Nursey reaches down and hefts something up, that something having red hair and freckles and a scowl. Dex grabs onto the windowsill and hoists himself up the rest of the way, muttering something about not being able to see the front door. He offers a halfhearted glare at Lardo, who waves at him from across the room, bemused.

Bitty pops through the door a moment later, and then they’re all set. Shitty grabs a PASIV from a utility closet, and everyone sans Lardo and Nursey straps in. Lardo messes around with some chemicals for a while, and she gets them all going fairly soon after.

Dex’s dream area is on the coast, but it’s not really a sandy beach. There are rocks everywhere, and it is so hot that Kent doesn’t stop to think about it before he’s bounding towards the ocean and his feet are touching the water, which is freezing.

The water is too cold, the rocks are too hot, and he jumps back and forth between them before looking up and seeing Bitty stare at him, incredulous. Kent’s about to ask why he’s not doing the same thing, but then Bitty yells, “Put on some shoes!”

Kent looks down. Suddenly, his feet no longer feel like they are frozen or on fire, and they’re encased in the kind of sensible brown loafers that he hates. He pouts for a moment and then walks back up the beach area, shrugging nonchalantly. “So everyone but Dex is going down into my level, right?” he asks, looking around. The ocean is fairly calm, and he sees everyone standing around on a boardwalk about fifty yards away. It doesn’t look like Dex will have a whole lot to protect them from while they’re here.

“The next level,” Bitty returns, and, oh yeah, they’re still arguing about who’s going next. Kent rolls his eyes and meets up with the others.

It’s declared a success, and even though there doesn’t seem to be any particular need for the enforcers so far, Shitty suggests that the frogs stay on. They’re all militarized, it’s possible for anything to happen, and they should be prepared. Kent agrees, because he can’t imagine that his projections will be happy when they figure out he’s trying to remove something that has to be important.

-x-

They never got married. Not really, anyway. Too many fake identities and aliases to risk using their real names for anything. Two sets of their identities had been married; Andrew and Don Mortimer, Scott and Richard Daniel. Each time, they’d picked who got who’s last name by flipping a coin.

Jack had wanted to get married, and Kent still can’t believe they didn’t do it. Not really. Not the kind of wedding that they could actually invite their friends to.

Jack’s parents are married, and that was what tripped Jack up the most every time Kent had to break the news that it wouldn’t be safe. They were on too many watch lists, a few of their aliases were already linked to each other, and Kent wasn’t going to risk toppling their house of cards just for the sake of one document with their legal names on it.

“We could have gotten married,” Jack tells him, and Kent sniffs as they walk along the river. They’re walking along the Chattahoochee river in some suburb of Atlanta. Kent went there once on a job while Jack was taking a job in New Zealand. And maybe it’s a bad habit of his, introducing his mental projection of Jack to all the places Kent was going to show him but they didn’t have the time.

“You, me, your parents. Who else would we have invited?” Kent asks just to be bratty about it.

Jack sits down and kicks his shoes off, tucking his toes into the soft mud of the riverbank. “I always liked Shitty. He’s actually officially a justice of the peace, you know. Or at least, he told me he was. He could have become one if we’d given him a heads up.”

“And who would we have been this time? George and Anthony Johnson?” Kent asks hypothetically, because thinking about this makes him feel sick. All the could haves and would haves pile up, and he’s left alone with the reality that Jack killed himself two years ago and he’s still picking up the pieces. Doesn’t know where they go yet, but he figures he needs to get all of them before he gets started on the assembly.

Curling his toes, Jack glances up and squints at Kent through the sunlight. “Dibs on Anthony. I hate the name George,” he says, scooting over slightly to make room on the flat area for Kent. “And no, we’ve already been married as other people. Twice. As ourselves. Didn’t you want to?” he asks, and Kent’s mouth goes dry. Either this shade actually has some part of Jack in him, or Kent’s subconscious is just really good at kicking him while he’s down.

Kent sits down, looking onto the river. “I wanted to marry you. You know I did,” he says, although he doesn’t know if he’s talking out loud to wherever Jack is or to the shade beside him.

With a roll of his eyes, Jack accepts Kent’s arm around him and tucks himself a little closer. “I still can’t believe the first time you proposed to me you had a mustache.”

“Well, you told me that the Reynolds were getting suspicious of two guys hanging around their hotel so often. I figured the newlyweds cover worked. In more ways than one,” he says, lowering his voice and waggling his eyebrows a bit. Jack’s reaction is just as he remembers it always being. He blushes scarlet and stares at the ground, trying to pretend that he doesn’t know what Kent’s talking about.

“You had a mustache,” Jack repeats, but he sounds like a petulant child who hasn’t gotten his way.

“You made me shave it off before the ceremony,” Kent returns, because he remembers Jack driving over to a CVS and picking up a disposable razor before they’d made their way to the courthouse.

Kent is so tired of remembering things. He has too many memories, he doesn’t want to just relive them for the rest of his life. He wants to make more. He wants to wake up next to Jack and work on their next job and bug Jack while Jack’s trying to run point. There is nothing more that Kent wants in the world than to be wrong, only he isn’t. He’s been wrong before, but now it’s one of those times. He feels heavy, like he could fall asleep on the riverbank as the waters play him a lullaby.

He could, of course, but he should probably be going topside soon. After all, he and Bitty are supposed to be figuring out the third dream level about now.

Running his fingers through Kent’s hair and tugging on his cowlick gently, Jack says softly, “We will get married.” He moves his mouth by Kent’s ear, saying, “I want to marry you. Tell me when you wake up that we’re going to get married, tell me that I proposed to you already and you made your decision. We’ll call my parents and a few of our friends, everyone within driving distance, and we’ll tell them to meet us by the courthouse.”

It sounds wonderful. Kent closes his eyes, tangles his hand through the one of Jack’s that isn’t tangled up in Kent’s hair, and resolves to stay here until the time on the PASIV is up.

-x-

Kent walks out of his room to find Shitty in the kitchen, Kit Purrson winding her way around his legs. Kent snickers a little bit and scratches Kit’s head obligingly when she comes up to him. “She usually doesn’t like other people,” he mentions, grabbing a cup of coffee and not bothering with milk or sugar.

“You’ve always seemed like a cat person. Why didn’t you have one before?” Shitty asks, jotting something down on a tablet. Kent doesn’t bother trying to see what it is, because he doesn’t care. These people have to get to know him so that they can help get rid of Jack, of the shade, whatever it is. If Shitty’s making notes on Kent, he doesn’t want to know what they are, and if he’s not then it’s none of Kent’s business.

Grabbing a pen off the counter and tucking it behind his ear, Kent shrugs. “Jack was a dog person,” he answers, making his way out of the kitchen and over to his office.

It’d been a luxury he hadn’t needed, when he’d bought the place. He hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to design dreams again, and to deal with that he’d bought LEGOs. Which sounds like a dumb decision, but he’d bought tubs and tubs of LEGOs and designed things the old fashioned way. His office is large room with a giant table, housing his three latest projects. Not that he’ll ever actually get to try them out, but here they are. Towering buildings, mazes on multiple levels, because it’s either go big or go home and Kent can’t go home anymore.

His favorite of the three is enormous, has a domed skyscraper at the center and a tunnel system underneath. There are trap doors that he can pick up and look down into the level below in, and Kent doesn’t even know how much time he’s spent on it. Enough hours to turn into days, easily. It’s not really a city, though it is urban. Enough green spaces to make it comfortable, and the streets spread out from the center like veins.

Lately, other than his bedroom, it’s the only place in the apartment where he’s not in danger of running into anyone else. And there’s not a PASIV here, so he’s not as tempted.

Kent locks the door behind him, opens up a tub of unused LEGOs, and starts sorting through.

-x-

Bitty keeps finding ways to argue with him. “I can’t just force my design on someone else’s dream! You’re an architect, you know how it works!” he yells, and Kent is so bored by all of this. It’s been going on more than a month now, and they’re not anywhere near close to figuring it out.

“I was an architect,” he responds, and he knows it’s kind of a low blow, but it’ll get Bitty to lay off for a little bit, which is all Kent’s looking for right now. People always shut up pretty quick once they remember that Kent lost his best friend and his job all in one fell swoop. And he doesn’t necessarily enjoy reminding them, but it has it’s uses. Like now, for instance.

Glaring, Bitty nonetheless finds a way to tone his voice down. “You were an architect. You know that I can’t just think really hard to make it happen. The dreamer is the one who’s ultimately in control of the layout, and if they don’t remember a portion of my design it’s their mind that makes up the rest of it.”

He’s right, as frustrating as it is.

The thing is, Kent knows that Jack might make an appearance no matter who’s the dreamer, so in some ways this discussion is kind of pointless. What he can say, though, he’s kind of an asshole. Because Kent’s sure to be upset about actually letting go of Jack, which means that Jack will probably show up.

Cobb taught him that much, at least. Shades can basically do whatever they want, and Kent doesn’t doubt that Jack can too, even if he’s less sure that Jack’s actually a shade.

Kent is so glad he and Cobb don’t keep in touch other than jobs. Because he really doesn’t want to tell Cobb what happened. And he’s sure that Cobb’s guessed by now, Cobb knew him and Jack and saw them together so often that he has to know what Jack’s death means for Kent. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots, and Kent’s just glad that the shade of Jack hasn’t been as violent as Mal’s shade was. Probably still is, because as far as Kent knows she’s still there, wreaking havoc. Not for the first time, Kent wishes that he’d met Dom before Mal died.

He’d asked Arthur once, what Dom and Mal were like before limbo, and Arthur’s face had flickered shut for a moment and then he’d answered, “They were happy.” With that, he’d left before Kent could ask anything else.

Twisting his fingers together, Kent brings himself back to the present, where Bitty is staring him down across the table. “We can try it your way, then. My projections in someone else’s subconscious, if you’re so crazy about it. It should be Shitty’s dream, though, since he’s the only one who actually knew Jack. It should be vaguely recognizable,” he snaps, standing and making his way out.

-x-

The night before they actually go under again, Kent tells Shitty about some of his hang-ups. The ones that they can fix, not the pointless ones that bump around in his head taking up space like _I’m never going to talk to Jack again, I’m going to be even more alone than I already was_ , and _Do I actually want to do this?_

“I know we want one of the frogs on each level, and I think we can both agree that the third level is going to be the most dangerous. We’re the closest to limbo, my subconscious is going to be wreaking some havoc no matter whose head we end up in. I just think that Nursey should be our last line of defense,” Kent reasons. “Chowder and Lardo get along great, they can hang out on the first level and gossip, I don’t know.”

Shitty gives Kent one of his patented looks like he’s about to go into a social justice rant, but he manages to force it down. “If anyone’s our last line of defense, it’s Chowder. I know you haven’t seen him in action yet, but he’s who you want. Trust me on that,” he says, leaning over the balcony slightly. He whistles lowly. “It’s a long drop.”

It is, yeah, but Kent’s not concerned with that right now. “Shitty, Nursey carries a Glock on him. Casually. I want him on the third level, do you hear me?”

“Nursey’s the one you want on the first level. That’s why we put him on the first level,” Shitty reasons.

“That was when I didn’t know the frogs like I do now,” Kent argues, because this is ridiculous. Nursey carries a Glock, he’s going to be the best on the third level. What’s more, he’s who Kent wants on the third level, and the last Kent checked he was the one running this operation.

Shitty turns to him, serious except for how his mouth is twitching towards a smile. “Man, I know you don’t have any faith in Chowder, but Chowder’s part of the team. When I said we should get the frogs, we got all of them, not just Dex and Nursey. Chowder’s third level, he’s got your back. No one is going to limbo on his watch. You just gotta trust me on that one, okay?” he asks, and for some reason Kent does.

“Okay,” Kent says, still hesitant but willing to believe. “I guess we do it tomorrow.”

Nodding, Shitty turns around and waves. Kent turns to see that he’s waving to Kit, who’s staring at them from the other side of the glass door. “Sounds good. Are you ready to do this?”

Kent has no idea what they’re going to find or what they’re going to need to do while down there. When he wakes up, he’s either never going to see this projection of Jack again or he’ll never be able to get rid of it, and either option makes him feel sick. He’s not even remotely close to prepared. He steels his face and lifts a corner of his mouth. “Totally.”

-x-

In the morning, Kent wakes up feeling sick. He goes through the steps in his mind.

Lardo’s dream is first level, she and Nursey are staying behind. Dex’s dream is second level. Shitty’s dream is third level, and that’s surely where Jack will come out to play. Because there’s no way that Kent’s mind will be stable enough to keep him back. That’s what they’re relying on, at least, that Kent isn’t mentally capable of handling this, and it looks like they’re right.

At the third level, in Shitty’s dream, Bitty says he left blank spots in the map. And Kent knows that his mind will be the one to fill them, because it will come second nature to him. It’s fine if he constructs small spaces, but an entire layout with Jack trying to get through to them would be disastrous. He’ll probably hide whatever it is that’s letting Jack stick around his head somewhere in there.

They’ll search through everything, find it… And then? Kent doesn’t know. Destroy it, probably.

It’s five in the morning, which means the others won’t be up for another two or three hours. Which means that Kent has enough time to do one last thing before the shade is gone forever. Before Jack’s gone forever.

-x-

“Old State House, the Haus, Notre-Dame Basilica, the Smithsonian. Jack and Kent’s greatest hits, all in one place,” Kent says, standing on a street corner. Jack is approaching him, passing by the café that was down the road from their apartment in Montreal. He looks bemused, like he’s not quite sure what Kent’s doing here.

“Usually you stick to one place at a time. What gives, eh?” Jack asks, twisting their hands together and leaning down a little to press their lips together.

Kent shrugs, turns to look at everything. “I figured we should try something new,” he lies, and he doesn’t know why he’s lying. Jack is a projection of his subconscious, so he undoubtedly knows that Kent’s trying to get rid of him. So why bother sparing his feelings? His feelings aren’t real anyway, just how Kent imagines Jack’s reaction would be. Kent stops himself from thinking too hard about it.

Jack doesn’t protest, allowing Kent to pull him through Old State House and pointing out so many of the same thing he’d done on their first date that Kent’s tempted to lose himself in the memory. When they leave it, though, they aren’t in the historic streets of Boston. Instead, they’re looking at where Jack lived while at Samwell.

“I can’t believe it. The Haus, immortalized in your memory,” Jack teases Kent, tugging him forward and into the yard that’s littered with beer cans, like they’re arrived the morning after a kegster. “God, I can’t believe that you came down to so many of these things.”

“Well, I can’t believe you lived in a frat house in college. Even if it was a service frat. I thought it was all an elaborate prank until I saw your room. The studious history major, having to put up with all that noise.” Kent avoids the wobbly step automatically, remembering how he’d ended up falling through it one time. Jack had been laughing at him too hard to help properly, and Kent had stayed with one foot on the steps and the other crushed through one, yelling about how he would help Jack if the situation was reversed.

They check the kitchen, still filled with Sriracha sauce and Ramen packets. The green couch, in all of its decrepit glory, holds court in the living room, and Kent takes a wide loop around it as he browses through the movies on the shelves. “Hey, I forgot you always used to watch these documentaries,” he calls, and Jack steps out from the porch to give a laugh in remembrance before bounding up the stairs.

Kent follows, making his way to Jack’s room and looking around in appreciation. Jack’s frat house had always felt more homey than Kent’s dorm, so Kent had taken up residence as well, basically moved in by the end of their senior year. The commute didn’t take long, and Kent was willing to put up with traffic if it meant he could fall asleep next to Jack at night. The keys to his old Honda are still on Jack’s dresser, and Kent picks them up and weighs them automatically. It’s an old habit, and he drops them when he notices, but Jack is too preoccupied looking around at the evidence of their cohabitation. Laundry mixed together in the hamper, Kent’s shaving cream next to Jack’s razor, Kent’s shoes piled up by the door. Kent closes his eyes, breathes deeply to calm himself. God, but he misses this.

“I forgot you couldn’t be bothered to buy a nightstand,” he says, looking at the steady stack of books next to Jack’s bed, piled high to function as a makeshift kind of table. The ones at the bottom are textbooks, thick spines and hardback covers forming the base and then giving way to the thinner coffee table photography books that Jack always impulse bought.

Jack looks over from his desk, walking over and slipping am arm over Kent’s shoulders. Kent gets an arm around Jack’s waist, because he’s never been tall enough to reach Jack's shoulders without having to embarrass himself and stand on his tip toes.

“Well, you were always telling me you could get someone at your school to do it as a project for that furniture design project, so I figured that buying one would be a waste of my time.” Jack turns very close to Kent, slipping into his space exactly the way they’ve always done, and Kent reacts as usual by pressing his fingers into Jack’s hip and reaching up to kiss him.

Kent misses Jack. He misses everything about Jack, from the way that he’d take too long shaving and didn’t like Kent coming in to use the bathroom while he showered to how Jack would make breakfast on Sunday mornings because it’s what his dad did. When Kent moved from Montreal and ended up in Vegas six months later, he hadn’t thought about all of the things that came with living with Jack until he didn’t have them anymore.

They’d basically lived together since they were twenty one years old, and somewhere in the span of their seven years of cohabitation Kent had forgotten what it was like to come home to a place that had no sign of life. He missed coming home to Jack on the couch, Jack humming old rock songs under his breath as he did research, Jack asleep on the desk because he often wouldn’t use the bed without Kent. Kent missed waking up to see Jack sneaking out for a morning run, missed how Jack would never put away the groceries, missed how Jack would sometimes come back and sweep Kent up with no real reason other than he was glad to be home.

Tilting to his to a more comfortable angle, Kent almost sighs into the kiss. It’s been a long time, but then he pulls back and runs a hand along Jack’s jawline.

“I don’t know how you ended up with me,” he says, and it’s true. If Kent had liked another buildings’ archways better, they never would have met. Jack probably never would have gone into dream share. Sometimes, Kent doesn’t know if that’s the outcome he wishes had happened.

Jack grins and shrugs. “You must have done something right,” he teases, only laughing when Kent pinches his hip.

There’s only so much longer that they have together. It’s a thought that Kent is trying not to confront, but he can’t help it. “Ready to head out to the next one?” he asks, already heading out of the room before Jack can protest.

Their next stop is the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. Not Kent’s favorite place on the list, maybe, but Jack is reverent before they even step through the doors. It’s a lot to take in, Kent will say that much. And he’s always liked the sanctuary, with its magnificent blues and how the lighting makes it look like Heaven was opening above them.

“I can’t believe you remembered,” Jack breathes, kissing Kent’s temple almost absentmindedly. “Thank you.”

To avoid getting too emotional, Kent shrugs and keeps looking to the front of the sanctuary, not meeting Jack’s eyes. “Of course I remembered. You said it was your favorite place in Montreal.”

“I used to come here for mass with my mémé.” Walking through the pews, Jack takes a slow, winding path towards the front.

By the time they’d met, neither of them were religious. Kent’s family never had been, but Jack had grown up with a devout Catholic grandmother who took him to mass every chance she got. She died when he was seventeen and he’d stopped going then, but he’d confessed to Kent at one point, when they’d been discussing the places that he could show Kent around in Montreal, that the basilica had been his favorite place as a child, because of its magnificence and its history.

Kent could appreciate those things, too, but it was the architecture that got him. Even still, it never grew to mean as much to him as it clearly did to Jack, and even now he stays behind, unwilling to interrupt Jack’s experience.

When they leave, Kent takes a step forward before Jack has his hand on Kent’s arm and pulls him back a little bit, leaning in for a kiss. After they break apart, Jack just nods very seriously at him. “Thank you for bringing me here,” he says, taking a step forward as Kent stays behind, closing his eyes and trying to figure out how much time they have left. Not much at all, judging by how his vision has started to swim.

Catching Jack by the shirtsleeve, Kent pulls him so they’re facing each other. “I love you, you know, I really do,” he says, the words bubbling up and overflowing quickly. “You know that.”

“I know you do. That’s why I’m here. To make sure you come back to me,” Jack says, and his face is sad but he smiles anyway. They’ve said goodbye enough times with the PASIV timing out to have a kind of routine.

“You’re the best thing I could have ever asked for,” Kent continues, and he knows his time is up, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. “I’d do it all again, only I’d find you earlier. We’d have all the time in the world together. I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t do any of this without you.” And it’s been two years, but every morning is like a punch to the gut when Kent wakes up and remembers that Jack is still dead and he can’t wake up next to him anymore.

“You don’t have to,” Jack says, and then Kent’s gone.

-x-

Shitty knocks on Kent’s door as he’s putting the PASIV away, and Kent just stows it under the bed. “You ready?” Shitty asks through the door.

Kent sighs and looks in the mirror. He didn’t used to have bags under his eyes like this. “Let’s get this over with,” he says, walking out and nodding everyone before putting in the IV quickly.

If anyone is bothered by how Kent’s acting, they don’t show it. Maybe Shitty talked to them or something, Kent doesn’t know. He’s just thankful that they aren’t trying to ask him how he’s doing, because at this point he really, really has no idea.

As usual, Lardo starts them off with her cocktail, and Kent ends up in a field. The warehouse isn’t quite as close as he’s used to it being, but he doesn’t mind all that much. If anything, it gives him a little more time. He can’t see anyone approaching from where he’s at, so they all must have ended up on the other side. Not unusual enough to be noteworthy, though, and Kent trudges through the damp grass and shivers from the cold. It’s always early morning in Lardo’s mind, the sun up but the dew hasn’t evaporated yet, and it’s always chilly.

There’s a crunching sound from behind him, and Kent turns around expecting another member of the team.

It’s Jack.

“You don’t usually do fields. Or is this a swamp?” Jack asks, good-naturedly, and Kent’s mouth goes so dry that he can’t answer.

Jack wasn’t supposed to show up until the third level. Kent has no idea what it means that he’s showing up this early, but it really can’t be a good thing. Swallowing, Kent manages, “This isn’t my dream.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but Jack’s face flickers for a moment and switches to confusion.

“But I’m here,” he says, looking around. Maybe there’s something here that gives away it not being Kent’s dream, but Kent really doesn’t know what Jack’s looking for. Some sign hanging from the sky that says _property of Lardo_ or something.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t trying for that,” Kent explains, wondering why he’s even bothering to answer. Something in his gut tells him that this is going to go wrong, things won’t work out quite the way that they’ve planned, and it’s all his fault. “I’m on a job,” he says, and it’s not a lie, not really, but he thinks that Jack already can tell that much.

They’re almost at the warehouse, and Kent is trying to figure out if he needs to hide Jack. If Jack would hide if asked. He doesn’t know, but he’s about to say something when Holster pokes his head through the door to check for stragglers and then says, loud enough that Kent can hear, “Well, shit.”

That pretty much sums up Kent’s thought’s on the matter as well.

Ransom comes out with Holster, since they’re the ones who have been around Kent’s shade before. Kent can see the others glancing out the window, exchanging panicked looks with each other.

Ransom starts. “Lardo’s projections are going to go crazy once they figure out there’s a shade.”

“Someone else’s shade, too, like they’d probably tolerate it better if it actually belong to her,” Holster continues.

“I’ve never even seen projections around here, come on,” Kent says. They could kill Jack without disrupting the dream, and then continue down to the second level as planned. “They won’t get upset, it’s not a big deal.” Don’t make this into a big deal, he prays internally.

Holster motions to the forest. “Just because you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they’re not here. Lardo says that there’s a village a little ways away, but they’re close enough they could get here if they wanted. And with him here, they’re definitely going to want to.”

Meanwhile, Jack stands to the side and watches the exchange with some interest. “I don’t mean to interrupt anything,” he starts tentatively, and Holster and Ransom take a break from bickering to look at him. “This clearly isn’t Kent’s dream,” he says, looking around like it should be obvious.

Kent glances up. Maybe there is a big sign that says _property of Lardo_ and he just missed it.

“If it’s easier, I can die,” Jack suggests, and Kent nearly swallows his tongue.

Ransom and Holster are side-eying each other, having some kind of nonverbal conversation that Kent’s never going to be able to catch onto, and it takes a few seconds but Holster finally nods and Ransom is taking out a gun.

Kent can’t be here for this. He cannot stick around to watch Jack die, and he’s about to say so when Ransom just fires, no warning shot, and Jack falls to the ground, blood spurting from the perfectly place entry hole to his heart.

Closing his eyes, Kent forces himself to breathe and not look at it, but it’s hard when he knows what Jack looks like when dead. It’s hard when he knows how pale Jack’s skin gets as the life goes out of him. Holster and Ransom have turned their attention on Kent, and Kent just can’t move. Jack is dead, or dying, actually, no, Jack’s been dead, that’s what got them all here in the first place. He tries to say something and his throat closes in on itself, so instead, he marches over to the warehouse and lifts himself up through the window.

Lardo walks over to him, and Kent doesn’t know her all that well other than the fact that he can mix some mean drugs and can kick his ass in beer pong six ways to Sunday, but she doesn’t say anything, just hands him an IV, which he takes gratefully. Holster and Ransom come back inside as well, and then everyone’s here. No one is looking at him.

Kent had actually planned on asking Nursey to come down to the second level and then maybe the third level from there, but there’s a dead shade of Kent’s subconscious out there, and Lardo’s projections might be coming over to see what all the fuss is about. He doesn’t say anything when Nursey doesn’t take an IV, instead helping Dex with his, and the only feeling that Kent has as they drift down to the second level is relief.

-x-

Dex’s dreamscape is Maine, he’d mentioned once. Not that Kent’s ever been, but he doesn’t think he likes Maine all that much. The ocean is fine, but it’s freezing up here even though Dex always puts them in the middle of summer.

Sea glass has washed up on the shore, and Kent picks up a piece absentmindedly. Shitty is a few yards away from him, and a few away from there, Chowder is talking with Bitty as both of them stand carefully on the sea strand, taking care to not get too hot or two cold. This time, Kent came prepared and woke up with shoes on. He just really hopes that Shitty paves the city that Bitty’s designed with asphalt. Kent’s pretty tired of having to look where he’s walking so much.

“Looks like it might rain,” Shitty notes, and Kent looks up to find that he’s right. Clouds are rolling in from the horizon, each darker than the last.

“Don’t worry, there’s a place over here,” Dex calls, and Kent looks behind him to see the boy pointing at a lighthouse only a little ways down the beach.

Everyone starts making their way over to the lighthouse, and Kent’s about to ask what beach this is supposed to be when he’s distracted by someone in the ocean, coughing up saltwater onto the sand. It’s Chowder, he thinks at first, just looking at the black hair, but then he remembers that Chowder is behind him, walking with Bitty. Slowly, ever so slowly, Kent turns back to the person in the water.

It’s Jack, because this is his life and Kent must have done some really fucked up things if he deserves this.

He walks over and nudges Jack with his foot. Jack doesn’t look that surprised to see him, just rolls his eyes and gets up, twisting a section of his shirt to get the water out. Before Kent can even say anything, though, Jack just looks around and then arches an eyebrow. “This isn’t your dream,” he says, and Kent doesn’t say anything back to that, because he’s right.

By now, Shitty’s noticed, and he walks up but still keeps his distance, which Kent appreciates. “Lardo’s projections may not have cared that much because Lardo’s pretty chill about everything, but you’re not going to have the same kind of luck with Dex,” he points out.

And, shit, he’s right. Kent can already see some projections making their way over from the boardwalk, and more are sure to follow.

“Want me to die?” Jack asks, and Kent forces himself to nod because there’s not another option. He and Shitty talked about this so many times, and it has to be the third level. The third level is deep enough that his mind will finally give up Jack, and if it doesn’t happen on the third level then it doesn’t happen at all. Kent was very clear about that. No one is going to limbo for him.

Shitty pulls out a gun, and Kent looks away just in time to hear the safety go off and then there’s a shot fired and Kent is walking faster down the beach, only looking back to see the hoards of projections that are making their way over.

“There’s going to be a lot of them,” Shitty says needlessly, and, yes, thank you, Kent’s realizing that.

There’s enough that Dex may not be able to handle them on his own. When they reach the lighthouse, it’s a conclusion that everyone else has come to as well.

“Shitty, Kent,, Ransom, Holster, and Chowder are the only ones who have to go to the third level. I can stay here with Dex,” Bitty is saying while Dex unspools the IVs of a PASIV in the middle of the room. There are couches all around, and Holster and Ransom are keeping watch over how far the projections have to go.

Honestly, Kent doesn’t know if he needs the two forgers below. “I don’t think I need Ransom and Holster,” he says, and everyone turns around quickly. Bitty is blushing, like he’s a little embarrassed that Kent had to see them talking about changing the plans. “I know that Jack isn’t real, so that really shouldn’t be a problem. So the only ones who have to come down to the third level are me, Shitty, and Chowder. Although I’d like at least one other person to come and be an enforcer.” Because if this is how Dex’s projections are, Shitty’s are going to be a problem as well.

There’s a quick count off, and then Dex says, “Bitty can stay with me and help. Holster and Ransom go down to the third level as planned, only they’re going to be enforcers instead of forgers.” He flicks a needle that’s filled with enough drugs to send them down for five minutes, which will give them just over an hour and a half on the third level.

Everyone agrees fairly quickly, and Kent gets his IV in without trying too hard. It comes almost second nature, at this point, to feel the sting and then lie back and wait for the kick.

-x-

They’re placed on a city street, and Holster yanks Ransom out of the way of a passing by car. Everyone has to be on their best behavior, because limbo is one step down and Kent’s not going back there again and he doesn’t want anyone else down there either. On the sidewalk, Shitty waits until they’re all around him when he reminds them all of the game plan.

Kent’s subconscious should have filled in the blank spaces in Bitty’s layout, and they’re going to start there.

Holster and Ransom are flanking Kent like bodyguards, and Chowder is talking about how cool it is that Shitty has all these flower shops in his city. Kent really, really wishes that they’d left him on the first level and taken Nursey to the third. What’s done is done, though, and Kent bites his tongue as Shitty leads the way.

He keeps an eye out for Jack, because the third level is where they’ve known he’s going to be all along. And if he made appearances on the first and second levels, there’s no way they won’t be able to find him now. That’s what Kent thinks, at least, glancing around as they make their way through the grid. Jack’s not in any of the coffee shops or flower shops, of which their do seem to be a lot. There’s even a big barbershop, which Kent thinks is ironic, but Jack’s not over there either.

Jack was in the field, Jack was in the ocean, and Jack’s somewhere in the city. He has to be. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it really would be better if he’s not, because that would probably make it easier on Kent to actually finish the shade. Harder to find what he needs to do it, but easier in the end, when he doesn’t have to look into Jack’s eyes and know that it’s really over.

The things that he never told Shitty about his hesitations about this keep coming up. Without Jack, Kent’s going to be alone. It was already hard enough, having to go through life without Jack while he was still able to visit him. Well, kind of. And it’s so sad that Kent honestly considered it visiting Jack, even if it wasn’t real. He could hook up to a PASIV and spend hours with Jack and still be back in time to clean out Kit’s litter box.

When Jack was first dead, and Kent found out about the shade, he knew that he couldn’t do dream share anymore. It was too dangerous, for him and any potential clients. Cobb had taught him that much, at least, that architecture doesn’t work if someone has a shade. And Kent was a decent extractor, but his passion has never been there. He was an architect, Jack was a point man, and they worked together seamlessly until they didn’t because Jack’s heart wasn’t beating anymore.

He’d gone back to America, headed west and kept going. And he’d been so lonely that he finally gave in, went down thinking that he’d see how similar Jack’s shade was to Mal’s, but he hadn’t known Mal while she was alive so the comparisons weren’t that useful.

Eventually, sessions where he’d go in to investigate turned into reminiscing times with Jack, who was so much like himself that it sometimes hurt to look at him. It always hurt to remember that he wasn’t real. And Jack kept telling him that even his reality wasn’t reality, and Kent realized, one day, that he wanted to believe him.

That’s when he’d brought in Shitty.

And now he’s wondering around in Shitty’s head, looking for Jack, being simultaneously disappointed and hopeful with every place that Jack isn’t. No one else seems to notice, too preoccupied with keeping an eye out for projections that could attack them at any moment.

“This is it,” Shitty finally says, motioning in front of them that Kent hadn’t noticed before.

And, oh yeah that’s Kent’s mind’s doing, definitely.

“What is all this stuff?” Chowder asks, looking up and down the street in amazement. None of the building really go together, all the styles are different. Some are modern, some older, and some of them look like pieces of junk while others are pristine.

Kent sighs and takes a step forward. “Jack and Kent’s greatest hits,” he says, and he really should have seen this coming.

It’s a hodpodge of places they’ve been together, not even arranged chronologically. An ice rink from Boston, where they’d gone skating together one Christmastime, each of them trying to impress the other. Kent had run into the glass and broken his nose. Jack’s childhood home, and then the house that Alicia and Bob live in now. Fenway park is even tucked between them.

Cobb’s old studio is the closest, so that’s where Kent goes to first. He waits for everyone to get on the elevator before hitting the button, and no one says anything as they go through all the different floors. He still knows exactly which door he needs, grabbing the key from under the mat and walking inside to where he first learned to dream.

It looks like it always used to. Blueprints scattered across desks, Arthur’s notebooks shelves neatly along the wall. Even some evidence of Eames if the atrocious paisley handkerchief is anything to go by. Kent doesn’t linger too long over any of it, though he does have trouble looking away from a picture on one of the desks. Eames had taken it, somewhere during Kent’s and Jack’s senior year. Cobb and Kent and Jack and Arthur. Kent and Cobb’s blonde hair contrasting with the darkness of Jack and Arthur’s.

Jack and Kent look like the young versions of Arthur and Cobb, which is what they’d promised to become.

“You trained with Dominic Cobb?” Chowder asks, completely in awe.

Kent startles and then blinks. “My teacher knew him. It’s how I got started in dream share,” he says, coming out of a trance.

Turning the picture down, Kent gives everything one last glance before leaving for the street, everyone following him out quietly. He can already tell that whatever he’s supposed to be looking for, it’s not there.

Back on the street, Holster and Ransom are telling him to check out Fenway, but Kent doesn’t really think that Jack’s first baseball game has anything to do with how he’s still hanging around in Kent’s head. Besides, they just want to go in because they’ve never seen it. Instead, Kent leads them towards Old State House, which has shifted positions since he saw it this morning.

“What does this have to do with Jack?” Ransom asks, following Kent into the building.

“It’s where we met,” Kent says, not bothering with more an explanation than that, walking around and trying to find the exact spot where it happened. He’d been sitting, sketching the internal arches, and Jack had asked him about the light… Kent pauses, and he’s so exhausted that he stops to sit down. It’s only when he’s seated that he looks up and realizes he’s exactly where he was all of those years ago. Almost ten years ago, and was it really that long ago? Something crawls inside his bones, and he stands quickly, determined to get out before he can think for too long about it.

There’s still no sign of Jack, even though this is clearly where he should be, but then Kent spots the building that their first apartment was in, and his mouth runs dry. He marches in, not even waiting for the other to catch up, shouting the floor number at Shitty as the elevator doors close behind him.

He’s so impatient, but finally they’re opening again and Kent’s bounding down the hall, swinging open the door to find Jack in the living room, holding a beer and grinning at him lazily.

Déjà vu hits him like a punch to the stomach, but Kent stays standing and manages to get through the greeting that they used to share. “Honey, I’m home,” he says, and he’s so thankful that the guys aren’t here yet, because they’d probably never let him live it down.

Jack smiles at him, standing and pressing a kiss to Kent’s lips briefly before looking around the room in confusion. “What is all this?” he asks.

Kent freezes. “What do you mean?” Because he really doesn’t want Jack to catch on to what’s going on here until it’s unavoidable.

“I mean, this is your work in someone else’s dream. Have you been able to do this before?” Jack asks, poking his head out the window and looking at the mismatched buildings that surround them. “You didn’t tell me.” He sounds disappointed, probably because they’ve never kept things from each other. Especially things about dream sharing.

“I didn’t know I could. This is the first time,” Kent explains, and he knows that the others are going to be at the door any minute, so he doesn’t have much time left for them to be alone. “I wanted to walk around and see the places we used to go. One last time,” he says, and he’s not going to get upset. This isn’t going to bother him, he’s not going to let it. Not even when Jack looks at him, shocked and a little confused by the phrase ‘one last time.’ “Want to come with?”

A heavy silence, and Jack says, “Sure,” just as the door swings open and Shitty, Ransom, and Holster come through.

They don’t even look at Jack, but Holster grabs Kent and pulls him towards the window of the apartment. “We’ve got pissed off projections, probably because of your shade here, so we’ve got to move,” he explains, looking around before shoving it open and glancing down. “Got any sheets I can make a ladder out of?”

“There’s a fire escape through the bedroom,” Jack says, and they’re halfway down when Kent notices that there’s someone missing.

“Where’s Chowder?” he asks, looking up to see if he’s behind them, only took a little longer to get there.

Ransom grabs Kent’s chin and forces him to look at the ground, where Chowder is waving to them. “He’s down there, now move!” he yells, pushing Kent further down the next ladder.

And somehow, when everyone’s on the ground and they’re across the street, Chowder just asks, “Is now okay?”

Kent’s about to ask him what the hell he’s talking about when Ransom takes out a pair of sunglasses and nods.

The building blows up.

Kent is going to pass out. Jack looks equally astonished, Shitty looks like a proud father, and Holster and Ransom look they’ve fallen in love with the explosion. Kent reaches over and taps Shitty on the shoulder, once. “Third level is fine for Chowder,” he managers, still unsure of what to do now that this child has blown up a building casually. Chowder doesn’t even look phased.

A dream building, sure, and none of the people are real, but still. Kent is just having some troubling with processing everything. He might need to sit down for a while.

Then, Chowder turns and says, “Oh, wow. You’re Jack Zimmermann.” He shakes Jack’s hand quickly, before going back to what apparently is business as usual. “That got all of those, ones, I think. We might have a few stragglers, but I’m betting there’s another swell coming up in the ten minutes or so. They always get so angry after you take a large group out.”

“What is this?” Jack asks, and Kent’s just glad he’s not the one who had to ask. Well, some version of him, but more so of his subconscious.

“Chowder’s an enforcer. He’s taking care of the projections,” Shitty says, turning to Kent and arching an eyebrow. “Come on, let’s figure out what you’re looking for.”

They’re already in front of the building where they were contracted out for their first job, but Kent really doesn’t think that his solution is going to have much to do with dream share. Call it intuition, but he and Jack were so much more than their work. He bypasses the building, because he doesn’t need to be in a conference room.

According to his watch, they’ve got twenty minutes before the PASIV times out. Ten until the next wave of projections. Kent walks a little faster down the street.

Jack looks around. “What are you looking for? Why would it be in one of these places?” he asks, and then he sucks in a breath once it’s clicked. Kent very pointedly keeps walking. “This is the job you told me about. The one you told me you’d called off. You’re still trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?” he demands, grabbing Kent’s shoulder and forcing the blond to meet his eyes. “I told you, I’m here because you know I need to be. I’m hear so that you can still be with me. Why won’t you listen to me?”

Suddenly, Holster’s got a gun pointed at Jack’s head. “You’re going to shut up or I’m going to make you,” he says steadily, stepping between Jack and Kent. “I know this is just a temporary fix, but it might make things a lot easier for us in the long run.”

“Holster, don’t. He’s literally my subconscious representation of Jack. He can help us find what we’re looking for,” Kent protests, breathing easier when Holster lowers his weapon.

“I’m not going to help you get rid of me. I’m here for a reason. Check your totem,” Jack snaps, and Kent blindly follows the order, reaches into his pocket and pulls out his keyring, flipping through and then shaking it when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for. Jack still doesn’t look satisfied, though, saying, “I meant when you wake up.”

Kent rolls his eyes. “I hate when you do this shit, I’m in reality when I’m topside.”

“You just think you are,” Jack snaps, jerking away from Holster and walking off. “I’m not helping you find whatever gets rid of me.”

Thankfully, Shitty, Holster, Ransom, and Chowder don’t say anything. Kent stalks past them towards his favorite café in Paris, conveniently located across the street from the park they’d walk through while visiting Jack’s parents in Quebec.

The problem, really, is that he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. It could be anything, anywhere. For some reason he thinks it has to do with the start of their relationship, so he goes back through the Old State House and combs through everything, and then he finds his old college dorm and checks everything in the drawers. Nothing in Old State House, nothing in his dorm, nothing in Cobb’s studio when he heads back just to double-check.

There’s another wave of projections coming, so Chowder heads off with a flamethrower and a cheerful wave that makes Kent’s blood run cold. Holster follows after him. At least Bitty isn’t having to see what Chowder’s been doing to his design.

They’re walking towards Annie’s, one of Jack’s favorite places at Samwell, when it clicks.

“The Haus,” Kent breathes, and it all makes sense. He’s running out of the building, crossing the street, and coming up to the Haus before he can even think about what he’s doing. Jack is standing on the porch, looking pissed off and bored.

“Need my help?” Jack asks, and Kent breathes a laugh. It probably looks that way, with the destruction that Chowder and Holster are causing down the street.

And even though it’s not Jack, not really, Kent walks up the steps and slips his arms around him, breathing in Jack’s scent that’s exactly as he remembers it. “I think I know what I’m looking for,” he says, taking Jack’s hand and leading them to the back of the Haus.

Kent doesn’t know how the Haus is holding up now, but it probably needs to be condemned considering that it was in pretty bad shape when Jack lived there and it’s been about ten years. In the back, a few of the bricks could be jiggled out of place, and people would hide stuff behind them. After their first date, Jack had suggested they hide something to look up in ten years. Well, it’s not quite there, but it’s almost, and Kent’s pretty sure he knows that whatever he needs to find is behind one of these bricks.

They’d each hidden something without showing the other. Kent put in the takeout menu from the restaurant they’d eaten from, and Jack had put something in as well, and then they’d left it. Left it to be forgotten until they needed to find it, only now Kent’s staring at the back of the Haus and there are a lot of bricks and he doesn’t really remember which it was.

He gets to work anyway, starting with one brick and working his way up. Jack stands behind him, not saying anything, which is how he knows he must be in the right place. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier,” Kent says, tugging uselessly at brick after brick. He starts on the next row, checking the time to see that they’ve got about six more minutes until they’ll be waking up in Dex’s level.

“You forgot?” Jack asks, like he doesn’t think it’s possible.

“You died, I had a shade. There were other things to worry about. And I probably would have remembered on our actual anniversary, anyway,” Kent defends himself, hooking a finger under a brick and finally getting some give. He narrows his eyes and starts moving it around, trying to get it to actually dislodge when the guys appear behind him.

“Chowder says two minutes until the next wave,” Ransom announces, and that’s when Kent realizes the air is thick with smoke. Three more minutes overall.

“You find anything?” Shitty asks.

“Almost,” Kent replies, finally getting it at just the right angle and yanking the brick back and throwing it on the ground. He plunges his hand into the empty space, pulling out two crumpled pieces of paper. The first one is the takeout menu that he remembers, and Kent doesn’t bother with that before tossing it on the ground, unfolding the one that’s unfamiliar to him.

Jack approaches, quiet and unhappy. He doesn’t say anything, though, and Kent can’t be bothered to look at him.

In his hands is a photo he’s never seen before. And Jack took a lot of pictures, Kent knows that, it’s kind of how they met, but Kent’s never seen this one before. It’s of him sitting on some bench, and he doesn’t really recognize it. Not that it’s taken in a way that’s meant to make the surroundings recognizable. It’s very clearly of Kent, how cowlick sticking up in front of his snapback, and he’s leaning over a drawing pad.

“Check the date,” Jack says, voice soft and tone firm.

Kent checks the date and swallows audibly.

“What is it?” Shitty asks, and Kent can barely speak but he somehow manages it.

“It’s a photo of me. Jack took it…”

“On the day we met,” Jack finishes, looking at the ground. “I took that photo before I talked to you the first time.”

Kent shivers. “I couldn’t have known that. I wouldn’t have seen this before, this is impossible,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know what to do. Jack stands beside him, curling an arm around his waist gently.

Shitty and Ransom aren’t meeting his eyes when Ransom passes him a lighter. Jack turns away, but Kent pulls him back quickly. If this is goodbye, he has to say it. “I love you,” he says, and he doesn’t let his voice waver. “I’m always going to love you, you have to know that.” Jack meets his eyes and nods, touching Kent’s jaw gently as the flame from the lighter licks its way up the picture’s side.

“Of course I know. I love you, too,” Jack returns, easy as anything.

Kent doesn’t know how much time either of them has left, and when he presses a last kiss against Jack’s lips, he opens his eyes up to Bitty staring down at him.

“Well?” Bitty asks.

Kent swallows and takes note of the fact that it’s storming around them. “The projections?” he asks instead, because he doesn’t see any sign of them through the window.

Bitty shrugs. “Dex’s doing fine. Figured I’d come meet everyone when they woke,” he says, and around them everyone else is removing their IVs and looking around at the lighthouse.

“We’ve got about two more minutes down here, and then up to Lardo’s level,” Dex announces, opening the door. He helps Chowder get his IV out and smiles at his friend. “How’d the projections take it?”

“He dropped a building on them, how do you think they took it?” Kent asks, and Dex laughs, ruffling Chowder’s hair.

“Did you get what you needed?” Bitty asks again, and Kent just stops and nods.

Everyone goes quiet for a moment. Shitty throws his arm around Kent and then turns to Dex. “I think that perhaps you should weatherproof this lighthouse better. Make it a little more hospitable,” he jokes, and Dex laughs and nods and Bitty backs off. Kent breathes a sigh of relief.

“I tried out that flame thrower, like you said, C. Worked like a charm,” Dex says to Chowder, and Chowder just lights up, starting to talk about how he and took out the second and third waves of projections systematically. Apparently a gas station was destroyed in the fire, which happened to make things a lot more interesting.

Kent’s listening to them exchange stories when he opens his eyes to see Lardo’s warehouse. One more level, and then he’ll be topside in Vegas. Lardo doesn’t ask any questions, just gets the PASIV cleaned up and announces that they’ve got a little less than a minute before the kick. Kent is so in awe of how she timed those dreams, and he cannot wait to be topside again.

Everyone is suspiciously quiet, waiting for the kick.

-x-

Topside, Kent doesn’t even wait for everyone to be up before he’s walking over to his room. And if he shuts his door a little harder than usual, that’s fine. Jack is gone for good, and it turns out that Kent really does not know how to deal with it. He thought he was going to be okay, he thought he’d take some time and deal with it. Because Jack’s gone, he has to be, and it doesn’t feel like the final nail in the coffin.

It feels like the coffin’s just been filled again.

Jack is dead, for real this time, and Kent is not going to freak out over it. He got a goodbye this time, which is more than he can say for two years ago. He got to go to go everywhere he’d wished to show Jack earlier. This is more than he could have hoped for, but Kent had adjusted to the shade. As much as one could, anyway.

Jack wasn’t Mal. He wasn’t evil or malicious or even all that angry. He was sad and serious, sometimes, but he joked. He would do the things that Jack would have done, and Kent wasn’t trying to store his best friend up inside his head, but it happened, and he’s not there anymore and it’s a lot harder to deal with than Kent thought that it would be by now.

He’s already dealt with Jack’s death once. He can do it again. Probably.

There’s a knock on the door, and Kent props his head up in his hands. People are still here. He can’t break down yet. “Come in,” he says, voice scratchy but not cracking, and that’s really all he can hope for at this point.

Shitty pokes his head through and waits for Kent for protest before actually entering the room, sitting next to him. “I know that couldn’t have been easy,” he starts, and, no, that’s not exactly the word that Kent would use for it. “It’s going to be good for you, though. Take some more time off, and then you can start to come back to work again. I’ll let you know when I have a job that could use you,” he says, soothing.

And that’s easy for Kent to hear and agree to, but Kent really doesn’t know if he can do that. “I killed him,” he whispers, and he didn’t think it would feel like this, still able to feel the heat of the lighter as he burned the last bit of Jack in the world away.

“It wasn’t him,” Shitty says, and his voice doesn’t waver. He genuinely believes that it wasn’t Jack, but Kent’s not so sure anymore.

They sit there for a long time, long enough for Kit to wander in and jump onto Kent’s lap, head-butting Shitty briefly to let him know his attention would be appreciated as well. Finally, Shitty dares to ask, “When your shade said to look at your totem…”

Kent sighs and pulls out his keyring. “We got into dream share together. My totem was my keyring, and when I’m under, the key to our apartment in Montreal would disappear. Because I’m not really home, in a dream. I knew about Mal, and I didn’t want to trick myself into thinking that the dream world could be home.” He flips through the keys, staring at each one individually.

“Which one goes to the Montreal apartment?” Shitty asks, and Kent sucks in a breath and forces himself to stay calm.

“I threw it out after Jack died. It wasn’t home,” Kent whispers, and Shitty hugs him carefully, gently, like Kent might break under the slightest pressure. Kent doesn’t know if he’s wrong.

-x-

The next day, Shitty asks if Kent’s sure that he doesn’t need to check to make sure that Jack’s gone. Kent just shakes his head, can’t make himself say anything. The team heads out, and it’s a somber goodbye. They’re all flying out on his private plane to Boston, and Kent tries very hard to not think of all the places out there he wants to go back to. Jack and Kent’s greatest hits, but suddenly they don’t feel that great anymore.

Lardo is, surprisingly, the only one who hugs him goodbye. She presses a scrap of paper into his palm. “If you ever need to get out of your own head, just come over. Shitty and I won’t mind,” she tells him, and Kent doesn’t start in surprise, because he did suspect that there was something going on between them, but he’s still caught a little off guard.

“I’ll come by if I need to,” he promises, waving them off. The paper she gave him has an address on it in Boston.

-x-

It’s another month before he can try out a PASIV.

Jack isn’t there, and Kent doesn’t waste much time wandering the empty streets before he shoots himself and wakes up back in Vegas.

-x-

In early August, Kent flies out to Boston.

He drives by Shitty and Lardo’s home, looks it over and considers calling them to let them know that he’s in town. He doesn’t entertain the idea for long, though, continuing to drive until he’s reached Samwell. And it’s the middle of the night, but the Haus is still what it always was: old, creaky, and filled with loud music and college students. There must be a kegster going on, Kent thinks, trying to figure out what day of the week it is.

It’s a Wednesday night. Honestly, Kent remembers what it was like when Jack lived here. He can’t exactly say that he’s surprised.

He walks to the back of the Haus, thankful that the party isn’t large enough to be spilling out onto the lawn, and he’s about to grab the brick when the back light on the porch lights up, and some kid with a pretentious haircut makes his way down the steps.

“Who are you?” the kid asks.

Kent makes a mental note that the middle of the night is probably not the best time to do something on a college campus without being noticed. For that he’d probably have to come in at like 8 am Sunday morning. “Kent,” he says, extending his hand.

“Whiskey,” the guy returns, and Kent shakes his head.

“No, I’m fine, really.”

The guy shakes his head. “No, my name is Whiskey.”

Kent is about to ask what the hell kind of a name is that, but he honestly can’t remember Chowder’s first name, and he calls the guy Chowder. Maybe there are worse names than Whiskey. “Oh, okay,” he says, falling quiet.

Whiskey looks him up and down, and Kent realizes that it’s been a long time since he belonged on this campus. He certainly doesn’t look like he fits in. “So, uh, what are you doing here?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.

Which, fair. “I hid something behind a brick with my boyfriend. He lived here. We were going to come back in ten years and look at it,” Kent confesses, because it doesn’t matter what this kid knows. Anything to get him out of Kent’s hair so that Kent doesn’t have to deal with him anymore. And, really, it’s the truth.

“So where’s your boyfriend?” Whiskey asks, glancing around even though there obviously isn’t anyone there.

“Dead,” Kent says, and the word doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.

Whiskey pauses, and it’s clear he’s about to say something when the back door opens and some other guy pokes his head out. “Whiskey, we’re setting up beer pong, why aren’t you here?”

“I’ll be right there, T,” Whiskey calls, draining the contents of his red Solo cup. To Kent, he says, “That’s Tango.”

Whiskey, Tango. “Where’s Foxtrot?” Kent asks, and he’s not trying to be funny, but it’s such an obvious set up.

“You and every other wise guy. Whatever,” Whiskey says, rolling his eyes. “You said your boyfriend lived here. What was his name?”

“Jack Zimmermann.” Kent pauses, waits for the guy to tell him to get lost. Instead, Whiskey just nods thoughtfully.

“Have a good one,” he says, climbing up the steps and going back inside.

With Whiskey gone, Kent doesn’t waste any more time, just tries to remember where the brick was. He’d found it once, he can do it again. He’s got all night, but not really, because there’s an hour before midnight and their anniversary is over. He gets to work, going to up to the spot that it was around and starting to figure out which one is the one that he wants.

Just like last time, when he finds the brick, it takes some coaxing before it’s out. And again, there are two folded pieces of paper, but Kent again doesn’t bother with the take out menu, instead pulling out what Jack would have placed in the brick.

It’s the same picture as the one he lit on fire beside the Haus in his dream. Kent at the Old State House, drawing arches, cowlick defying gravity and charcoal smudging his fingers. He looks absorbed in his task, squinting at the ceiling to make out all of the individual details. The date in the corner is the same as when they met.

There’s no way that Kent could have known this is what Jack put in the brick. He didn’t know that it existed, he couldn’t have made it up.

-x-

Kent writes the letter as soon as he’s home. He finds the address fairly quickly, getting postage and sending it out before he loses his nerve. His key ring is heavy in his pocket, probably wrinkling the photograph that already has lines in it after spending ten years behind a brick.

“Jack was right,” Kent whispers to himself, balancing carefully on the balcony banister. He closes his eyes, grips the wall tightly, and, for the first time, he lets himself really believe it.

“Jack was right,” he repeats, reaching with one hand to run through his key ring. The apartment key to Montreal is missing.

“I’m right,” he breathes, letting go.

-x-

Lardo opens the mailbox and sorts through it quickly. Bills, mortgage, nothing of real importance. But something sticks out to her, and she notices an envelope that had gotten sandwiched in between the pages of one of the knitting magazine that Shitty orders. She pries the pages apart and shakes it loose as she walks in the kitchen.

Setting down the rest of it, she looks at it carefully. “Shitty,” she calls, because surely this can’t be real.

By the time that he’s come down the stairs, her hands are shaking. “What is it?” he asks, leaning over to get a better look at what she’s looking at before falling silent.

 _Either way, I’m with Jack again_ is written in Kent Parson’s handwriting. Inside the envelope is a photograph that Shitty last saw go up into flames.

**Author's Note:**

> At first it was really hard to write this story?? Like I could not get it to work because I kept thinking about Jack being the one that lived after Limbo and Kent was the one that killed himself, and that would kind of devolve into Zimbits. So maybe, eventually, I will write that one. No promises.


End file.
